‘My learning’ Category

My first communication outside the Twitterverse with Dr Colin Jones was an hour long phone conversation back in March or April about my MRES topic. When I mentioned I was presenting on Enterprise Education (EE) in Cologne, he suggested I also attend the ISBE conference in Birmingham the following week, since I was in the area. At the conference, Colin introduced me to his friends/contacts which led to many interesting conversations. We also had time to continue our discussions about EE and my possible research focus, which were extremely valuable and enjoyable.

Anyway, here’s A PIECE of what I appreciated most from the conference.

ACTIVITY

I enjoyed the idea Dr David Higgins presented about the need for EE to be researched as an activity (verb) and our own involvement, as opposed to the clinical scientific arms-length approach that describes human activity in concrete terms (nouns) instead of their actions/emotions/motivations/thinking/etc .

Matt Rogers-Draycott – Matt first came to my attention just a few months ago when I read an older article he co-authored. I did a series of tweets about it because I just love his thinking and approach to EE.

Catherine Brentnall – I had a few but brief chats with Catherine at the conference. She didn’t have much luck while she was there. For instance, a taxi driver took her to McDonalds for the Gala Dinner instead of the Macdonald Burlington Hotel and she had a tummy bug on the last day resulting in her having to leave as soon as she presented her paper. However, I’m sure this friendship will continue to grow over Twitter.

Prof Nigel Adams – In discussion on the walk to and during the gala dinner, Nigel reminded me of ‘Doc’ in Back to the Future due to his intelligence, passion and eccentric mannerisms. He even showed me video of him riding an electronic skateboard owned by one of his students.

Unfortunately I missed Lucy Hatt’s presentation, mainly because it wasn’t in the Enterprise Education stream. We follow each other on Twitter and had chatted briefly at the conference. At lunch on the second day, Lucy and Colin talked intensely and deeply about her concept of intersections in the student’s entrepreneurial journey, while I listened in. Colin was adding to it by saying the role of the teacher is to be at some of those intersections and work out what the student needs to help the student choose the path from that point. I also recommend following Lucy’s excellent reflection blog about her PhD process and progress.

ECHO-CHAMBER

During one of breaks, Andrea and I talked about a range of EE topics, including the echo chamber of EE, particularly that it often echoes theoretical papers more than empirical research. Lo and behold, the very next talk by Catherine and David was about the need to break out of the echo chamber and include more philosophy in the EE field.

ECOSYSTEM

I have been considering some sort of organisational theory/ies for my PhD. I was reminded by Dr Su-Hyun Berg and Prof Jay Mitra’s presentation of an ecosystem approach. I’m a little wary though, because sometimes ecosystem is a bit of a buzzword in EE literature. On the last night Su-Hyun, Jay, Colin and I went for a drink. Jay and Colin regaled us with conference stories and I learned how Su-Hyun moved from Korea to Germany 14 years ago and after two years of resisting the German language, gave in and now speaks it fluently.

This is just A PIECE of what the two days of conference gave me. Now, as I enter the solo holiday part of my trip, I need to write my PhD EOI/proposal which has been informed and confused by the ever-increasing number of EE concepts that have been brought to my attention.

I can see hundreds of teachers voluntarily gathering for the sharing of pedagogical ideas. I can hear a cacophony of accents as they chatter earnestly making new connections and friends. I see Russel Tarr, one of the first few international connections I made on Twitter nearly 10 years ago. He organised this conference at St. Georges’ School, Cologne, from Toulouse, in his spare time. I have found Russel to be deeply intelligent, skilful and passionate about education and continuous learning. Through this conference he has also demonstrated how incredibly organised he is too.

Look! Look! Look!

I can see a pumpkin patch of golden nuggets. I’ll list 12 of the biggest and brightest nuggets from the conference in a rough chronological order:

I met Jared, a science teacher from North Carolina, USA, when we sat down for the opening of the conference. He has a delightful American drawl and repeatedly called me ma’am which was equally uncomfortable and endearing. His commitment to teaching and life in general made a warm golden moment to start the conference.

Hywel Roberts‘ opening address. I had spent the previous couple of weeks reading Hywel’s book Oops! in preparation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that fond of the book since I felt it to be a little patronising but in person Hywel was very entertaining. I laughed often and loudly. After a while his educomedy style felt like it was going too long and I became silently critical of the lack of substance. He must have read my mind because he reassured the audience that substance was coming soon. And it did. His message about narrative and story-telling (Look! Look! Look! I can see…) through relationships with students provided a good reminder of the joy and wonder teaching and learning can create. I also liked his three key words:

Imagineering (aka VISION – visionary teacher): Thinking and planning for teaching to make curriculum palatable without dumbing it down. This takes professional imagination which unfortunately can often be eroded over time.

Botheredness (aka MISSION – caring teacher): Demonstrating authentic care, being the caring adult (not at war with children) and building botheredness in students for the work they’re doing in class

An Action Research Observation Sheet from a session led by Liz Free could be useful for my PhD research.

Dominic Tremblay (not @DomTrem or @DominicTremblay on Twitter – I found out the hard way) presented a system he has implemented in many schools called Follow the Money. I loved his enthusiasm and he had some wonderful ideas for teaching student financial concepts in a really active way. I just have concerns about the extent to which the program in full implementation is so fully steeped in capitalist values. For example, charging students a fee for using a paintbrush that is refunded upon return of a clean brush in good condition may work against attempts to instil good values for the sake of good relations, community and society. I have seen research that suggests as soon as childcare centres start charging parents for late collection of children it leads to increases in how often and how late parents are to pick up their children because of the transaction value placed upon it instead of values of respect and consideration.

Dominic also demonstrated how to use the Post-it Plus App. A tool I’m sure to use in the near future.

I loved the workshop by Joanna Norton because she looks at the world with such an artistic and creative eye, different to the more linear and ordered way I do. She provided lots of ideas and food for thought. Some divergent thinking too. I particularly love the idea of bringing books into class to peruse with QR codes of Questions.

I ran into Mariusz Galczyński at various times over the two days of the conference but it was the bus ride from the school to the city at the end of the first day during which we discussed education and politics extensively in the 20-30 minute trip that was the highlight. This is another connection I hope to maintain well into the future.

I stand by my tweet about Jennifer Webb‘s presentation. Probably my favourite session. I nearly didn’t go to this session because I have a really lovely friend, Jen Webb, and I was scared that the name would be tarnished but no, the name still stands for people who are gorgeous, lovely and caring.

Neil Atkin took us on a journey of emotional states and thinking flaws. He introduced me to the McGurk effect (YT video below) and Brain Rules by John Medina.

When I first discovered someone else was presenting on Enterprise Education at Practical Pedagogies my imposter syndrome kicked in, making me worry I’d be showed up as an amateur in the area. Instead, I have a new connection and friend in Rachel of Enabling Enterprise (aka Skills Builder). Enabling Enterprise provides standards/criteria for essential skills at a range of levels, an area my research is lacking at the moment. I will definitely be investigating further.

My own presentation. Russel had asked presenters for preferences regarding when we ran our workshops. I said I didn’t but when I found out I was scheduled for the last session, I realised I did. Not last! As it was, it was good to see Rachel’s presentation first and even though we are conceptually similar we hardly overlapped in what we actually presented. I was horrified by a couple of shortfalls in my slideshow (now rectified) but at least the flaws helped to determine which bits I needed to skip since I was very aware I had too much for the hour and ten minutes we had. A last minute inclusion was the use of Lotus Charts, introduced to me by friend and former colleague, Kendra. Russel, with camera in hand, walked in as I was introducing Lotus Charts. He was pleased to have come at a point where he learned something new. It was also a hit with the participants, resulting in a few Tweets. I think overall my presentation went well.

Cologne itself. The pubs and their 200ml glasses of beers that just keep coming were loud and fun. The cathedral is an imposing sight near the main railway station and opposite our hotel. Apparently it took over 600 years to build. It is one of hundreds of churches in Cologne. There’s a saying that you could go to a different church for every day of the year in Cologne. There is also a Chocolate Museum in Cologne that provides a history and manufacturing process of chocolate with some tasting to be had. When I was there numerous school groups were going through, giving me flashbacks to the stress of running excursions. There are also numerous art museums that time didn’t permit us to visit. Next time.

Even though I have yet to hear a reaction from my supervisor about the latest topic I’ve proposed for my MRES, over the last couple of days I have been steadily researching pedagogical practices in enterprise education. One article amused me because it fitted so well with my experiences of teaching Business Studies. Basically, the article (Jones & Penaluna, 2013) slams the use of business plans for developing entrepreneurship in students. I’ve read 100s of articles in the last few weeks but since this one tickled my fancy, I tweeted the Australian author, Colin Jones. A bit of an exchange about my research ambitions occurred and we are now aiming to meet over a drink in Brisbane in a few months time. Then his co-author from the UK, Andy Penaluna, also started tweeting me and sending links to great resources for my topic. Colin had probably gone to bed. Andy and I tweeted until I postponed the conversation at 2am. This morning I received more tweets from both of them. How cool is that?!

I think I have been following Russel Tarr on Twitter since my first few months of joining, many years ago. He is from England but teaching History at an International School in Toulouse, France. He is a passionate and innovative teacher. A few years ago he started a conference in Toulouse called Practical Pedagogies but no matter how hard I tried to fit it in to my life and budget I couldn’t go. People have raved about it. Well now I have been accepted to present at this year’s conference which is being held in Cologne, Germany, 1-2 November. I’m hoping to tie-in a visit to Emma who will probably be on university exchange at the time, perhaps in France, perhaps in Taiwan. Now I just have to manipulate credit card points to pay for the flights.

I am honoured and privileged to have these opportunities but it’s freaking me out a little. There is a lot happening in October and November this year. My MRES mini-thesis is due in the middle of a professional development course called Navigating Pedagogy I’m conducting on a cruise to Noumea and New Caledonia (7-14 October). Tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Actually, I shouldn’t be so flippant about it. I have already done a lot of hard work to develop the course and be endorsed as a professional development provider by NESA (Board of Studies NSW). As for the MRES dissertation, I’ll just have to submit it early and be prepared for the cruise and the conference super ahead of time. Really, it just means I need to be as organised as I have been the last few months. Easy!

2017 ACSA Conference

WHAT IF? Embracing complexity through curriculum innovation

Part 2

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”, W.B. Yeats

I ended the previous post with the plea that surely, learning is the point of education (as opposed to the final mark at the end). So let’s dig deeper into what learning entails, putting aside, for now, marks driven education.

The Purpose of Curriculum

One of the questions raised at the conference was regarding the purpose of education. According to Matthews (2013) Education is fundamentally concerned with the transmission of culture, values, beliefs, knowledge and skills (p.167).

I object to the use of the word transmission since it implies students are mere sponges. Is our curriculum meant to instil a particular set of culture, values, beliefs, knowledge and skills? And whose culture, values and beliefs are we talking about? Global or Australian? Should education be about the construction of culture, values, beliefs, knowledge and skills? You will often hear me being anti-dichotomies, espousing that education is about balance. Of course there are fundamentals to what young people should know and understand but it is also important that they learn to think for themselves.

In his Garth Boomer Memorial Lecture at the conference, Bob Lingard argued that globalisation has reduced national control over the economy and in response, governments are grabbing onto cultural sovereignty. He referenced on his slide:

This is seen in attitudes towards asylum seekers but also in rhetoric about education and how Australia performs in the global sphere and the citizens our education system is supposed to produce. There is a definite top-down approach to what values should be taught, demonstrated most clearly in the Values for Australian Schooling posters distributed to schools in February 2005.

The use of Simpson and his donkey in this poster is particularly contentious for me because there is much more to the story of Simpson than the heroic attributes assigned him in the context of the Anzac Legend construct. National curriculum reflects what is deemed important by those setting it. Perhaps also the global assessments of PISA, and to a lesser extent, TIMSS, is driving our content-heavy curriculum.

The Role of Teachers

Slide from Dr Phil Roberts’ presentation

In his workshop, Dr Phil Roberts talked about the ‘State Theory of Learning’ (see slide above). In this state-controlled content driven curriculum, teachers often feel stymied. Many teachers feel disenfranchised from the curriculum and believe they just need to do what they’re told, that they can’t be an integral part of forming curriculum. Some teachers feel so down-driven, time poor, they’re only covering superficial content not looking at the big picture of learning. Phil wondered how much of this has stemmed from an ‘outcomes’ approach to teaching by shifting the concept and focus of curriculum from being a holistic course to end results. He also proposed that it is time to start reclaiming the notion of teacher as curriculum worker, citing Nicole Mockler in her piece from earlier this year, Roll back curriculum constraints and give teachers the freedom to make professional judgements. For further reading, read Phil’s views on curriculum and Gonski in his 2013 article for The Conversation.

Bob Lingard pointed out that on top of the curriculum, teachers are further downtrodden with teacher standards under the quality teaching framework used to bash teachers for their shortcomings.

Instead teachers need to be respected for their expertise and given a stronger voice in policy.

Bob also wondered how much the ever-expanding high-stakes testing regime would become increasingly commercialised through the outsourcing of tests, curriculum, support materials and tutoring agencies. Thus, reducing teacher input to the construction of education even further.

Before the Australian curriculum was written, Professor Alan Reid (2005) wrote a comprehensive report which included compelling arguments for a “capabilities-based approach” (p.6) that “would take the emphasis off the subjects” (p.8). One argument involves that capabilities lie upon a never-ending scale of attainment whereas knowledge is more of a binary concept, either the facts are known or they are not (Reid 2005, p.54). It therefore goes part way to meeting the Melbourne Declaration goal of equity by allowing students to strive to the extent of their capabilities instead of judging them on how successfully they have acquired the prescribed knowledge. (Hartley 2013)

A central purpose of curriculum should be the development of capabilities for living in a democratic society… (Reid 2005, p.38)

…if the purpose of education is to promote human development through experience, then the starting point for curriculum work should be the identification of the capabilities that people need, individually and collectively, to live productive and enriching lives in the 21st century. (Reid 2005, p.53)

An official curriculum should reflect the kind of society we are and want to become, and should seek to develop the sorts of capabilities that young people need to become active participants in our political, economic, social and cultural life. (Reid 2010, p.31)

Earlier this year at an ACEL event, the NSW Minister of Education, Rob Stokes, said the purpose of education, based on Greek philosophy, was to prepare children to make a living and make a life. He acknowledged the social aspect of this as being almost impossible to measure. Is this difficulty in measurement behind the tick-box approach of the implementation of the general capabilities in many of our schools?

If schools are not being judged on the general capabilities of their students there is a lack of impetus to dedicate precious time to doing it properly. Instead, programs come under Learning Areas first, with the General Capabilities tenuously linked with existing material or superficially slotted-in where there are gaps.

The student panel conducted after Jan’s talk expressed excitement over the proposition that they can create their future, not merely accept it. The panel, however, also showed that to a great extent the students are a product of their school. The student from a prestigious private school preferred the linear progression of textbook learning and the straight-forwardness of exams. He also argued social justice education should be left to primary school so academics could be more thoroughly covered in high school. The other two liked being engaged in meaningful learning, including social justice, throughout their school life.

The wonderful Omar Musa performed several of his powerful poems about identity and place in Australia. He spoke of an Australia often unacknowledged by those in power. All aspects of Australian society should not only be acknowledged but be an integral part of our curriculum. In response to questions from the audience, he argued for relevance in education, that there is a need to attract students to the beauty and power of words through hip-hop music and the like. Of course, as someone in the audience pointed out, there are risks involved with teachers treading in unfamiliar territory, such as misogynist lyrics. Let’s leave that quandary there. Omar also presented a good case for teachers to focus on the talents of individuals, to recognise sparks in students and ignite them, like a teacher encouraged him to develop his use of words by expanding his range of reading matter. He also warned against teachers killing off free-thinking in their students, for example, a teacher berated him for reading Trainspotting and damned his parents. for allowing him to do so. I am grateful this teacher failed to curb Omar’s enthusiasm for words. For more Omar Musa, see his website and Ted Talk.

Our world is so much more complex than our curriculum makes it appear. We therefore need to address contentious issues in schools. As Prime Minister, Julia Gillard wanted to focus on human rights within our schools, so in response UTS (Burridge et al, 2013) investigated “the place of human rights education in the school curriculum in each state and territory and the extent of the opportunities for teaching and learning about human rights across the school years” (p.5) in a report called Human Rights Education in the School Curriculum. This report was co-authored by Nina Burridge, who was asking at the conference, how far teachers can go as activists within schools. Teachers generally feel they are meant to be politically neutral in class, but when human rights, social justice and viewpoints of history are involved (for example), it is basically impossible to be neutral. I believe teachers have a responsibility to address a variety of global and local issues. However, parents and politicians complain about teachers indoctrinating students, forgetting young people have minds of their own and their right to make their own (informed) decisions. It seems there is a fine line between this responsibility and being considered irresponsible radical activists. Yet again, teachers’ professionalism is called into question.

The next post, the last in the trilogy, will:

Address how schools and teachers can reclaim some aspects of the curriculum, partly through changing their pedagogical practices

Cover the TeachMeet held during the conference

Present other parts of the conference that haven’t neatly fitted into what I’ve written elsewhere

References

Matthews, J. (2013). The educational imagination and the sociology of education in Australia. Australian Educational Researcher, 40, 155-171.

Over the last week I have been visiting my brother and his wife and their 9 month old baby, Ruby. As I watched Ruby live and learn about the world through experimenting with lots of trials and errors, I thought of the students in my classes expected by the system to learn in a linear and orderly fashion. It’s just not how it’s done.

Ruby started to crawl not long before my visit. While I was there, she couldn’t decide whether it was worth her while to lift from the commando style crawl to the more rigid hands and knees crawl. She was partly deterred from using her knees because as soon as she left her alphabet play-mat she would encounter the hard and slippery wooden floors. But tonight a video was posted online of her crawling, hands and knees, down the length of the hallway, slippery wooden floor and all. The way she placed her hands so deliberately it looked like she’d studied a textbook, or I really should say, YouTube, or that she had been coached. It’s like my daughter after 8 years of tennis coaching running to the net with her coach’s voice in her head telling her how to exactly move her feet and swing the racket. On the other hand, my son, with minimal coaching, runs around on a tennis court like a cartoon Tasmanian devil and has a similar success rate. Yet Ruby wasn’t coached as to how to crawl, by a textbook, video or human. It is part of her natural development, even if some babies skip the hands and knees stage (like her father), and she will become more fluid with practice. How much do we stifle our students’ natural development?

Ruby is normally contained to an area defined by two couches and two walls with just a small gap between a couch and a wall. Sometimes that space is plugged by an ottoman but when it isn’t present off she goes! However, she doesn’t go far because soon she is distracted by a well stocked wine rack. “No”, her mother says. She stops, hesitates, but decides the bottles just look so good she has to touch them. Down swoops Mum to prevent glass shattering, wine loss and a bleeding baby as a result. I’ve always been an advocate for having a few things in the house which babies and toddlers can touch but shouldn’t, to start early the idea of self regulation. I’m not so sure now. How much do we harm our students by forcing them to be contained within classrooms, subjects and timetables?

Our children need freedom to discover and learn, to try and fail and fail again. Ruby tried to pull out a bottle of wine several times in the 5 days I was there but she was thwarted on every occasion, as is necessary for her safety. But still she persisted. When do children lose persistence? I suspect it is when they discover adults have all the answers. Or Google. They can then become passive in their learning. I remember when I was little asking my Mum what certain words meant or how they were spelt and being told to look it up in the dictionary. Now I just type unknown words in Google and the answer appears almost instantly.

While I was visiting my brother’s family I revisited the book, Making Thinking Visible, by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison. Ron Ritchhart is going to be presenting at a conference I’m attending this Saturday so I thought I’d refamiliarise myself with the language he speaks. One of my favourite quotes from the book is:

Thinking doesn’t happen in a lockstep, sequential manner, systematically progressing from one level to the next. It is much messier, complex, dynamic and interconnected than that. (p.8)

A baby doesn’t suddenly shift from commando crawling to hands and knees crawling to standing to walking along furniture to walking freely. Babies are usually learning to do bits of these skills at a time, simultaneously to various degrees. Ruby likes standing with people holding her and by leaning on furniture but sometimes she forgets that she hasn’t gained complete control of this standing business and topples over when she doesn’t maintain a hold. And that’s OK, as long as someone is around to stop her hurting herself in a significant way. Our role as teachers is to provide a safe environment, conducive for learning.

Ruby doesn’t need to be given a mark for her crawling ability. The nurse, GP and/or paediatrician just want to know she is doing it within the parameters of the normal age. My son had trouble relative to his peers with his fine motor skills before he started school so he attended occupation therapy (OT) to be sufficiently ready for school, meaning preparing him to hold a pencil. The best advice the OT had was to give him Lego. For him, having mild autism, the control freak aspect of it, the linear progression of building Lego by numerated steps was bliss. He’s now 17 years old and it is still one of his favourite activities. It also helped immensely with his fine motor skills. The beauty of play, huh!

Learning though has become a very serious business in our institutionalised system, and is a political fireball thrown around parliament and in the media. This week the NSWESA released new syllabuses (or is it syllabi?) for English, Mathematics, History and Science subjects with the hashtag #strongerHSC repeatedly employed by their main account on Twitter and their human representatives. I constantly have the impression from our dear NSW education authority that it wants the HSC to be known as the toughest, most stringent and demanding course across the country. Too bad about the stress and anxiety that high-stakes testing causes. Too bad that an emphasis on exams and phrases like “mastering knowledge and skills” reduces the desire to learn and the enjoyment thereof.

Additionally, as the book Making Thinking Visible claims, mere knowledge does not produce understanding. Deep understanding requires a range of thinking skills that isn’t clear from our content heavy syllabuses/syllabi. The book lists the thinking required for understanding as (p.11 and p.13):

Observing closely and describing what’s there

Building explanations and interpretations

Reasoning with evidence

Making connections

Considering different viewpoints and perspectives

Capturing the heart and forming conclusions

Wondering and asking questions

Uncovering complexity and going below the surface of things

Of course we don’t only think to understand phenomenon, we think to solve problems, make decisions and form judgments (p.14):

Identifying patterns and making generalisations

Generating possibilities and alternatives

Evaluating evidence, arguments and actions

Formulating plans and monitoring actions

Identifying claims, assumptions and bias

Clarifying priorities, conditions and what is known

This is what I want my students to be doing. The trick, as the book’s title suggests, is to make thinking visible. We need to ask what is going on in our students’ heads (p.16) and provide them with the strategies that instigates the thinking and reveals it. As teachers, we then need to listen (p.36) and document (p.37) their thinking. Not merely hand out marks for attainment of knowledge. It is difficult to understand the thinking process of babies without language but oh boy, crying, frowning, smiling and laughter are effective forms of communication. My son has difficulties expressing what’s going on in his head but his body language can be quite clear. We just need to pay attention.

I hope to post before Saturday some of the thinking routines promoted in the book and how I’ve used them in class and how I intend to use them in the future.

One final note, however. As I‘ve typed this up I realised there is one key component missing from these ideas of thinking, and that is creativity. Last night I watched the first two episodes of My Year 12 Life (ABCTV) and felt for the girl lamenting about the emphasis on the subjects that scale, like those in the new syllabus release this week, instead of her favourites, which are deemed optional extras, like her Drama and Textiles. She was considering continuing with her study of Modern History just because it scales better than her other subjects. There’s something wrong with the system that makes students think like this. She mentioned she is also studying Society and Culture so I’m looking forward to following her journey there. I’ve loved teaching Society and Culture due to the range of topics that stimulate thinking and encourage looking at alternative perspectives.

Last week I attended the AIS Education Research Symposium. When I worked at Oakhill College I was part of the team that created and implemented REAL (Relevant Engaging, Active Learning) and then we researched its impact. Unfortunately I left Oakhill before the end of the two year research project but thankfully I remained involved to an extent. We designed REAL to create a paradigm shift in the teaching and learning environment at the school through a transparent curriculum in a detailed but clear (student-friendly) format, structured for students to know each lesson or week:

What is to be learned

How it is to be learned, and

The evidence of successful learning

The research project examined the impact of REAL on student outcomes but effectively discovered the effect it had on teachers too. The research revealed REAL as a significantly successful program, although teachers found it hard to adapt their practices, and I’m proud to have been associated with it.

But this post is about the symposium. The main participants at the symposium are from schools that have received a funding opportunity from AIS and are at the start, middle or end of a two year research project. It is also for any other teachers who are keen to make stronger links between research and teaching practice. And the first keynote speaker, Dr Stacey Waters, was exactly on this topic.

It is extremely hard to make a cultural shift in any institution, let alone a school which has so many entrenched perceptions of what it should be like. Nearly everyone in the world experiences school and our experiences are reinforced by pop culture’s representation of it, this image being a teacher up the front instructing students sitting in rows, resisting the learning process (except when they have a superstar teacher like Michelle Pfeiffer or Robin Williams).

This is not the one best way to learn. Academic research has indicated this repeatedly, yet many schools resist changing (much like their students resist learning). I think part of it is the conflicting voices dominating the discourse of how schools should operate. As mentioned before, there is the entertainment industry image but there is also the political viewpoint that schools must do better, meaning better at publicly published score achievement (PISA, NAPLAN, HSC). In education conference circles there are a few (mainly men) who have a certain popularity, often stringing out their one concept stories for decades (I’m thinking the hole-in-the-wall story and the idea that schools kill creativity).

The academic voice is often lost in all this. There are some who are picked up by politicians and/or the media. For example, John Hattie and his Visible Learning ideal is lauded by politicians and the media. However, even the John Hatties often remain ignored in the day-to-day classroom, for a number of reasons.

Personally I think it stems from a dominating need of isolated teachers in their classrooms to have control and order. Control and order is easier if learning is considered to be the mere accumulation of knowledge. It casts a dark shadow on education. Teaching is better if it is collaborative, learning is better if it is collaborative, but it is much harder to maintain control and order in a collaborative environment when there isn’t a desire to learn in the first place, by teachers or students. It is harder to know what individual students are doing in a collaborative environment and if it is known that they are not participating in the learning process, it is hard to know what to do about them. There are plenty of theories, methods and systems that can be put in place but really, it all comes to dealing with individual motivations and desires to learn. And to be honest, the better learning environments take more time and energy to plan and monitor. I love an active collaborative learning environment in my classrooms but boy, it’s hard work a lot of the time.

Prof Ruth Deakin Crick shared this quote as part of her presentation about the use of technology to change school culture from exam-driven teaching to a learning culture with dynamic pedagogy and engagement (image, however, was clipped from elsewhere):

Teachers are so busy and comfortable with what they know well and what they’ve been rewarded for in the past, they don’t want to become even busier and take risks that result in lost control and disapproval.

So now we can see why some resistance to change exists, let’s return to the academic voice and other reasons why it is difficult to implement research findings into school practice.

To be able to research in a detailed, scientifically credible manner, academics focus on narrow areas to reduce multiple confounding factors in their study. They generally want to discover a cause and effect, and the size of that effect, but to be specific and certain they can only concentrate on one cause and one effect at a time, whereas education is much much more complicated than that. It is like reducing economic modelling to two products in the market. It illustrates a concept but an economy with just two products is not real life. This is why Hattie’s study is so appealing, it throws hundreds of studies into the mix and calculates which causes have the most effect. However, one point worth noting, is how long this all takes. A research project can take years, and then months to write and publish in an academic journal, and then even longer to garner the attention of those who it really affects, people in schools. I’m not sure of the age of the studies Hattie includes in his meta-analysis. Due to the narrow focus and time-lags the question was raised at the conference as to whether the academic rigour should be sacrificed, to an extent, to allow more pertinent and practical studies be undertaken in a more timely manner. I don’t know the answer.

The publish or perish pressure on academics is a significant factor too. The money associated with grants often comes with a proviso of what must be researched. Dr Stacey Waters also referred to the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) system which awards points according to the category of grants. To be published, it helps if the research is something new and different, rather than going deeper into something that has already been examined. The dream situation for an academic though, is selling books. And books sell if they have something novel and easy to implement. We all know how hard change management is, but just how many books advocate just ‘x’ number of steps (eg Kotter’s 8 steps) like it is a simple linear process? It’s not.

Even if academics find something that is commonly considered important to implement in schools, the process is slow and usually ineffectual. Researchers are already balancing teaching and research and then they need to market their findings so that schools will take their ideas on board, when so many ideas are already present. Dr Stacey Waters says that publishing and even training people is not enough. One of her presentation slides said:

Implementation is most successful when…

Practitioners receive training and coaching

The organisation provides the necessary infrastructure for training and coaching and regularly evaluates

The community is fully involved in the selection and evaluation of programs

(Fixsen, Naoom, Blasé, Friedman & Wallace, 2005)

She argued that schools should build relationships with universities and establish a research culture by providing easy access to academic journals and having a forum to discuss what these journals have to say.

Before Oakhill obtained the research funding opportunity from AIS, we asked some universities to help us perform academic research. We discovered that not only did they want to be paid consultation fees, that some even wanted to virtually take over the whole process. We backed away quickly and were relieved and grateful to receive the AIS funding opportunity. As part of the inaugural recipients of research funding there was only minimal guidance but still, some important structural requirements, including an academic advisor. However, we ended up only spending 50% of the budgeted amount we allocated for the advisor. He was extremely helpful for implementing research that produced quantifiable data and how that data could be used, but partly due to how late we were and partly due to the lack of need, we didn’t use as much of his services for the writing part as we thought we would.

So here we were at a conference that was bringing together academics and teachers, albeit those already interested in research. As Terrie Jones tweeted, “Teacher practitioner researchers in partnership with academics bridging the research practice divide? This room. #AISRandD16”. One of the sessions I enjoyed the most was about Case Study as a form of research. From what little I have been involved in research at a tertiary level, I have found case study methods frowned upon because it is not appropriate to extrapolate something that works in one circumstance as being applicable to a wider range of circumstances. Dr Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn argued that yes, three case studies are better than one, but much can be learned from them and proceeded to demonstrate how powerful they could be but also recognising their limitations. I tweeted that I’d love to work on a case study with Dr Kimberley and she responded with a “Let’s talk” which I will probably take her up on some time next year (see screen grab below). However, I’m not looking to do research like this until at least 2018. I started a Master of Research (MRES) at Macquarie University this year but stopped just a few weeks in due to lack of time. I’m currently not working full-time so I can help my son through his HSC (he has autism and anxiety issues). I considered studying also during this year ‘off’ but I need to make him the priority, not my own work. After that I’ll be open to all sorts of projects!

The people at this conference are the core people of their organisations interested in learning and continuous improvement. What we actually need to learn as researchers within schools, is how to gather-in colleagues to a learning mindset and join with us.

When we first attempted researching the REAL project ourselves, we applied to present at academic conferences in Seville, Spain, and New York, USA, and were approved for both based on our ‘abstracts’. This was before the AIS research funding program even existed and we were without any support from universities. We then had to write papers for these conferences, the New York paper being subject to a peer review. It failed one reviewer but the other advised us to change the format significantly, which we did, and it was then published <http://shanihartley.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.264/prod.58>*. We also had to review other papers which was a great learning experience for us. At these conferences there was much said about education at all levels but over 90% of the presenters were from universities. Universities seem to take a more hit-and-run approach instead of working in tandem with the schools they research. It would be nice to see or even experience more collaboration between schools and universities in the research process at academic conferences. Perhaps we were better off without a university’s own agenda. We were unusual in being school teachers conducting and presenting our own research. There should be more of it.

* Despite numerous emails to the publishers, the bios of the authors were not corrected.

I have been to several TeachMeets. This particular TeachMeet was held at Google headquarters in Sydney which was one of the main attractions for me. I missed out on one two years earlier and as I searched for the Twitter hashtag for this evening I found an exchange that occurred about the use of #TMGoogle – the issue being that TeachMeets are supposed to be teacher ran and teachers as presenters, no sponsorship. However, to host a TeachMeet in a cool location such as Google HQ there is a trade-off. Tonight I felt the trade to be rather unequal. The hashtag was not #TMGoogle but perhaps it should have been. It seemed every second speaker represented Google and was promoting something, useful somethings, but advertisements nevertheless. An extra grating factor was that teacher presenters were held to their time limits, albeit poorly, speakers not being deterred by soft Star Wars toys being thrown at them when their time had expired, yet Google presenters had limitless time. And trust me, the teachers were much more interesting than the Google employees.

The stated theme of this TeachMeet was ‘Solve for x’, thereby promoting problem solving in education, that students solve whatever issue ‘x’ represented for teachers and/or students. The evening was officially launched by Kimberley Sutton through a YouTube video to explain the concept: Moonshot Thinking: Solve for x @ Tribeca Film Festival. Our first teacher presenter linked a goal to this theme nicely.

I have known Phillip Cooke through TeachMeets and Twitter for many years. He is a passionate secondary school educator and declared this evening that his moonshot concept is teaching for life instead of for exams, a policy I am also passionate about. I have enjoyed seeing Phillip present on this theme in many variations before. He is always interesting because not only does he and his colleagues come up with the ideas but they actually implement them, although I’m sure he wish he could implement more. Phillip was intricately involved in the complete rebuild of his school, a school often seen in the industry as an alternative option for the misfits in our education system and thus had a poor reputation for a long time for drugs and disruptive behaviour. However, its hands-on practical approach to education is becoming more dominant in industry discourse and it has featured on a TV show for doing things a little differently.

Phillip’s attitude towards authentic learning is borne out by some of the initiatives he has shared:

Establishing an annual Creative Careers Day where the future implications of their learning come to life through the people operating in creative enterprises

Printing art designs of students on tea towels and selling them, simple but effective (also make great thank you presents at Teach Meets)

If I was to give my own moonshot for teaching and learning is that I desperately want students to be thinking for themselves. As a senior school teacher, I hate how much teaching is about preparing for HSC exams, such as artificial artifice that it diminishes authentic learning. This is why I always like what Phillip has to say.

Epistemology (how do we think, why do we think, what influences our thinking and perception)

My daughter is currently studying International Relations and Human Rights at university. She would have loved the opportunity to examine some of these topics at school. Her response being:

One of the students undertaking this course used several sources to investigate the Jewish holocaust and, as might be expected, referred to movie representations of the holocaust such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He also had access to his grandmother’s letters and other documents depicting her time as a Jew interned by Hitler. The result was not just a well researched product but the rest of the class had a new insight into the atrocities.

Nick Brierley hooked me by not only emphasising the thinking skill of problem solving but linking to the TV show Stranger Things, where the children in the show are constantly having to solve problems, not always successfully. He advocated the use of BreakoutEDU, a resource for creating engaging problem-solving games in classrooms. This is definitely a tool I will investigate further.

Technology definitely has a role to play in developing students’ critical thinking skills. A primary school teacher, Alfina Jackson commenced with the statement that she hasn’t heard students say they need PD before they can use technology, so if they can do it, teachers can do it too. Glib, but mostly true. I have come across many teachers who are so ingrained in teaching the same way, with the same worksheets, year after year, that they truly struggle with making more than the occasional change to their regular modus of operation.

Alfina has her own YouTube Channel, mainly consisting of videos made by K-2 students. These videos demonstrate learning in an authentic and meaningful way for our modern age. Without many of us realising it, children are learning all the time through YouTube. Actually many adults too. I recently used YouTube to learn how to cast-off my knitting. Alfina is therefore not only teaching students a particular topic, she is teaching digital responsibility. Creating public videos also motivates students through the hands-on activity and real audience feedback. All of this requires several higher-order thinking processes.

Another initiative Alfino implemented was Year 1 completing book reviews on Google Slides. For the content, the teacher taught students to use three simple sentence word-starters:

I liked the part…

I disliked the part…

I would change…

However, after a quick introduction to using Google Slides, the students worked out for themselves and taught each other the various creative features of using the slides. After the first drafts were completed the teacher provided feedback through the comment feature which prompted students to comment on each other’s reviews, leading to a discussion of how to write positively, particularly in a public domain.

On the other hand, I don’t believe technology should be used for simply its own sake. Alfino showed how students learning to write could trace the letter on an iPad. I’m not sure how this particularly improves on the pen and paper version except simply for the hook that it is on an iPad.

The highlight of the evening was the dynamic Kathleen O’Rourke. Kathleen is learning to become a Primary School teacher at Macquarie University after a decade or so in the workforce. She is passionate about many things and her LinkedIn profile reveals she is not only an advocate for education and the marginalised but she walks the talk. At first I thought she was also going to emphasise technology due to her tagline, “Is it OK to ask students to do something that we are not comfortable to do ourselves?” Instead, Kathleen answered that question with, “If we don’t pursue our x’s how can we expect our students to?”

As part of being a pre-service teacher, Kathleen decided there wasn’t enough professional development on offer, beyond the regular uni courses and practicum experience so out together some events and now the concept has exploded. As a full-time carer for her grandmother, Kathleen found it difficult to access working disabled toilets, particularly in medical institutions. Consequently, she has an aim to develop an app that lists and user-rates them. I spoke to Kathleen at the end of the evening and found just how determined she is to put theory into action. Earlier that day she had been at a school presenting to teachers and discussing with them a university assignment. This was not part of the set work. She has also tutored primary-aged students who are newly settled refugees on a volunteer basis.

I was not the only one who thought Kathleen was amazing. This was the reaction on Twitter:

All in all it was worthwhile attending this TeachMeet. I learned about some new Google products and enjoyed hearing how other teachers are implementing problem solving and other critical thinking activities. However, I’d prefer it if future TeachMeets adhered to the no sponsorship ideal, even (especially?) if it means returning to the pubs and clubs where they began.

I’m starting to realise I’m a naïve idealist. I want to teach in a way that benefits every single one of my students. I want all my students to learn and achieve as well as they possibly can. I want all my students to enjoy learning, embrace their positive passions and have a fulfilling life. That’s all.

I started studying my Masters of Education just for the piece of paper at the end but fell in love with the course with the very first two subjects, Curriculum and Pedagogy. I was lucky enough to be well versed in the language of current thinking in these areas. However, what kept biting me was the amount of rhetoric I was inclined to use without evidence. Now, I’m so into what I have been learning for the last year and a half I want to just keep on going.

It felt like I started my PhD this year but technically that’s a long way off yet. When I finish my M.Ed., I enter the second year of a Masters of Research and then commence my PhD at the end of that. These last two subjects of my M.Ed. are proving a bit of a stumbling block though. One, a Literature Review, is meant to help me gain some background knowledge on the area I’m going to cover in my PhD but my grand ideas of writing about some of the big concepts in education keeps being narrowed down and down to a manageable size. Of course I want my studies to be manageable but I also want to make a big difference. I don’t think it’s an ego thing but instead I am driven by trying to find what’s the best we, as teachers, can do to help our students. My other subject is the one I wrote about in my last two posts, an Introduction to Educational Research (EDCN800).

Only three of the usual crowd of twelve or so turned up for EDCN800 last night, yet I came away more confused than when I arrived and wondered if it had been worth it. Before arriving, I had a clear idea of what I was going to do for the next task (design a qualitative research study) and had received 3/3 for my proposal (my only 3/3 for our first task) but alas, no more. You see, I made the mistake of making it an authentic task, something I could see myself doing in real life but really, all we have to do is go through the motions. My idealism protested somewhat. I want my learning to be meaningful and practical during the process of doing it. I’m not just after the marks or even learning this now for some research I might do in the future; as I learn about how to design qualitative research, I want to be actually, in reality, authentically, designing qualitative research.

However, a piece I have to write within three weeks for a uni assignment is not reality, particularly when talking about designing qualitative research; it normally takes much longer than that. The literature review I am writing within one semester cannot contain every single article that I need to read to produce a doctorate thesis. I am struggling with these limitations!!!

How much more then, are we struggling in high schools to make learning authentic? How can we help our students think they have something to contribute to the world when we have such short times on any one task, any one topic? Some say school isn’t real life, that it is a false, socially constructed institution and that we should just accept that it is a mere addendum on real life. How can we make secondary school learning authentic and meaningful if we can’t make it about the real world? Do I ask too much?

PS

Perhaps my next post will need to be about the benefits of learning for the accumulation of knowledge rather than for practical application because of course, I see a place for that too in our curriculum. For instance, I know many teachers and students who love learning about Ancient History for the sake of mere interest. I love novels for what they say about the human condition.

PPS

My literature review has morphed into the question:

What do we know about the connection between ‘assessment for learning’ and the self-regulation of students in secondary social sciences?

My qualitative research design will be probably based on the question:

As part of my Masters of Education at Macquarie University I am studying EDCN800 Introduction to Educational Research. Yesterday’s blog post lamented the frustrations I was having with the statistical aspects of the course. Today I was looking at the construction of questionnaires and the exercise set was basically the writing of some questions for evaluating a unit of study. The thinking behind these questions is a little influenced by John Hattie’s Visible Learning (2009) which is currently guiding a research project with which I am involved, but mainly they come from an accumulation of experience and study of a wide range of material. The areas I’ve noted and the questions themselves are not even close to being exhaustive lists. I actually hope to later develop this into a real questionnaire to evaluate my own courses. I’d be interested in knowing what you would include.

Aim: Evaluating a unit of study within the Masters of Education program.

Students know and understand more and can do more as a result of the course

Students are engaged, interested and/or enjoy the course

Students increase their desire to learn

Students obtain a sense of achievement from completing the course

Examples of research questions to be included in a questionnaire conducted at the conclusion of a unit of study.

The learning environment

To assess the experience of the student in using the online page I would include these questions:

The online course page was easy to navigate.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The online course page clearly presented the unit’s requirements.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The online course page supported collaborative learning.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

To conclude the online environment section I would ask an overarching question such as:

How satisfied were you with the online environment in this unit of study?

Very dissatisfied

Dissatisfied

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

Satisfied

Very satisfied

Knowledge, understanding and skills

To assess the experience of the student’s learning process I would include these questions:

The course outcomes were easy to understand.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The course was challenging.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The course extended my understanding of the topic.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The course helped me to think more deeply about the topic.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

To conclude the knowledge, understanding and skills section I would ask an overarching question such as:

How satisfied were you with what you learned in this unit of study?

Very dissatisfied

Dissatisfied

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

Satisfied

Very satisfied

Assessment

To assess the student’s experience of assessment I would include these questions:

The assessment requirements were easy to understand.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The assessment criteria was easy to understand.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The assessment criteria matched the assessment requirements.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The assessment requirements were challenging.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The assessment process extended my understanding of the topic.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The assessment process included helpful feedback before final submission.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

Don’t know

The assessment process was fair for all students.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

Don’t know

To conclude the assessment section I would ask an overarching question (or two) such as:

How satisfied were you with how assessment was marked in this unit of study?

Very dissatisfied

Dissatisfied

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

Satisfied

Very satisfied

How satisfied were you with the process of completing assessment in this unit of study?

Very dissatisfied

Dissatisfied

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

Satisfied

Very satisfied

Communication

To assess the student’s experience of the communication process I would include these questions:

The teacher was easy to understand.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The teacher provided clear expectations.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

The teacher provided helpful feedback.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

Not applicable

The teacher was approachable.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

Not applicable

The teacher provided timely responses to questions asked.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

Not applicable

To conclude the communication section I would ask an overarching question such as:

How satisfied were you with how the teacher communicated in this unit of study?

Very dissatisfied

Dissatisfied

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

Satisfied

Very satisfied

The impact

To assess the impact of the unit of study I would include these questions:

I know and understand more about this topic area as a result of completing this unit of study.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

I found this unit of study interesting.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

I want to learn more about this topic area.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

I obtained a sense of achievement from completing this unit of study.

Strongly disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly agree

To conclude this section I would ask an overarching question such as:

How satisfied were you with what you learned in this unit of study?

Very dissatisfied

Dissatisfied

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

Satisfied

Very satisfied

Construction of the Questionnaire

These questions were designed to align with what I thought was most important for assessing a unit of study.

They were written to be easily understood (“natural and familiar language” with “clear, precise and relatively short items”, Johnson & Christensen 2014, p.193) and allow for an appropriate range of options.

To keep the questions easy to follow I used a fully anchored scale for all questions and there were only two styles of rating scales: (1) Agreement – for students to assess the elements of the course (2) Satisfaction – for students to assess the impact of the course on themselves in a broader and more personal sense.

On occasion an option of “Don’t know” or “Not applicable” was added to allow for students who had not experienced that particular aspect of the course.

The number of points were kept to five to assess students’ ambivalence and avoid irritating participants by forcing a stance.

The wording was kept consistent where possible between sections, such as asking if the course/assessment/convenor were easy to understand, to allow for direct comparisons between the elements being researched.

I believe I have avoided leading or loaded questions although at times I was tempted to add an adjective or two which would have broken this principle.

I’m currently studying EDCN800 Introduction to Educational Research at Macquarie University. It is the only compulsory subject in my course but I put it off to last because it seemed so dry, and well, boring. I have my regrets, however, since it would have been quite useful to know what I should be doing before I submitted abstracts on behalf of my team to international conferences. When we were accepted to these conferences I had to write academic level articles on the basis of haphazard and amateurish research. One of these articles was for a peer-reviewed journal and one of the two peers who assessed the paper slammed it for not being written in the acceptable academic format. I had avoided the more academic format because I didn’t want to pretend that the research was formally conducted. I have now resubmitted the piece into a more acceptable format but it still awaits final approval.

More recently, I have been trying to support a friend who has been designing real proper research under the guidance of a university professor. The professor’s critiquing of the attempts to write a research question and plan the research methods was a painful process but the frustration was worth it in the end because I think there is a very valuable research project currently underway. As I do this course I can, in retrospect, see more clearly what was required and if I had completed this subject before this year it might have been a much less painful process. Now, as I study the ethics of research I wonder how much more should be done to cover ethical considerations in my friend’s research. It is also giving me more depth to my knowledge of research methods for when I teach Society and Culture.

In the first semester of my Masters of Education I chose one subject (curriculum) because a friend was also doing it and another subject because I felt knowledgeable in that area (pedagogy). I had enrolled in the course just so I could obtain the piece of paper and letters to look good on my CV but within a couple of weeks of participating in these two subjects I was enjoying myself immensely and did quite well as a result. However, the one aspect that I was continually criticised about was the negligible evidence to support my (soapbox) statements. I have improved a lot in this area since then.

Now as I study EDCN800 I expect high achievement from myself but I’m not succeeding. I’m engaged in the subject because of the afore-mentioned application but despite being quite numeracy literate I struggle with the statistical concepts and analysis of data. I only received 65% for the first of five assignments. Today I battled with the concepts of reliability and validity with all their different coefficient measurements. The concepts in themselves are fine but when I have to apply them to a technical academic article it becomes all muddled up and difficult to navigate. Not only do I need to understand these concepts for EDCN800 but I am also writing a literature review for EDCN806 which requires an examination of the reliability and validity of the articles I am including in the review. It is all driving me insane and I question my ambition to complete a PhD down the track. As a result I’m feeling a fair bit of empathy with my students at the moment.

Anyway, that’s enough complaining, I need to attack a question about evaluations using numerical ratings and then write some of my own questionnaire items to assess student experience in studying the Masters of Education. It is so much easier to help my students design their research for their Personal Interest Projects (PIPs) in HSC Society and Culture than to do it myself at a university level. But here I go…